New Book: Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

The Next Book is: Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
The Author is: J. D, Vance
Here is a link to a review/synopsis:
The meeting date/time will be: December 16th 6:00
The meeting location will be: Leslie’s

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of poor, white Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for over forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. In Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hanging around your neck.

The Vance family story began with hope in postwar America. J.D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually one of their grandchildren would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that J.D.’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, never fully escaping the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. With piercing honesty, Vance shows how he himself still carries around the demons of his chaotic family history.

A deeply moving memoir, with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.

@vivian and @stephenjdeal have requested a change of date to either Friday, Dec 16 or Saturday, January 7. Please express your preference in the poll below:

  • Prefer December 16
  • Prefer January 7

0 voters

Date has been changed to December 16th.

Putting this on Stan outlook as it will useful starting now. I can get book club guests in remotely. At the buzzer, type #401#. Be patient, it will take about 20 seconds for me for the intercom to dial and for me to buzz you in. Leslie

Or maybe just let out a Rebel Yell and well know to let you in.

I’m planning on bringing some Christmas cookies, btw

Note to @bookclub We will be meeting tomorrow at 6:00. Food will be take-out Chinese so bring something to supplement that if you want. Leslie’s place is here

There is an interesting video with J.D. Vance where he talks about his book with respect to Trumpism.

He does get pushed on the issue of the White working class vs. the non-White working class and the respective portrayals of these groups.